In recent years, woven and non-woven fabrics made of ultra-fine fibers have widely been used because of their high degree of softness, good touch, and excellent wiping property, as well as high strength in the case of non-woven fabrics. One commonly used method for fabricating non-woven fabrics from ultra-fine fibers is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 48-28005 (1973), in which a non-woven fabric is fabricated by integrating composite fibers each comprising at least two resin components that have poor compatibility with each other--known as splittable composite fibers--into a web through use of a dry or wet method, then splitting and entangling the fibers through the physical impact of a high pressure fluid or the like.
However, since such splittable composite fibers are required to be easily split by physical impact, thermoplastic resins having poor compatibility with each other are combined, resulting in the difficulty of carding when the web is formed through dry carding or the like, because static electricity is generated due to the formation of split portions during the process, and neps are produced due to the reduction of fiber fineness. If splitting is reduced, on the other hand, the difficulty of carding is improved, but the composite fibers will become difficult to split by physical impact, resulting in poor processability.
An object of the present invention is to solve the problems in processing prior art splittable composite fibers described above, and to provide a splittable composite fiber which can be easily split.